Zhaolingshan site

Zhaolingshan site

Zhaolingshan site, located in Zhaoling village, Zhangpu Town, Kunshan City, Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province, is a Neolithic site. Zhaoling mountain in the center of the site is an artificially built platform like Earth mountain about 3 kilometers away from the South Bank of Wusong River. It is 110 meters long from east to west and 80 meters wide from north to south. It is oval in shape, covering an area of 10000 square meters and about 9 meters higher than the surrounding area. Surrounded by ancient rivers, it is a typical earth platform type site in Taihu Lake area. It is in the same latitude with the ancient sites such as Weiting caojiao mountain, Luzhi Zhangling mountain, Qiandeng Shaoqing mountain and Qingpu Fuquan mountain.

Covering an area of about 10000 square meters, it is an oval mound with an altitude of 10.5 meters. It is a large-scale earth building platform in the early Liangzhu culture. Three archaeological excavations were carried out in 1990, 1991 and 1995, covering an area of 2000 square meters. The cultural accumulation layer is 9 meters thick, the upper layer is the remains of the spring and Autumn period, the middle layer is Liangzhu culture, and the lower layer is Songze culture. A total of 94 tombs of Liangzhu culture were found. What is remarkable is that these tombs are closely related to the earthen platform. They are buried according to the poor, rich, noble and humble owners, and there is a large-scale phenomenon of centralized killing and martyrdom, which is the first discovery in Liangzhu Cultural site. The unearthed cultural relics include jade, stone and pottery. The discovery of the site is of great significance to the study of social phenomena in Liangzhu period. In May 2013, zhaolingshan site was approved as the seventh batch of national key cultural relics protection units by the State Council

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Cultural relics

More than 600 pieces of cultural relics were unearthed, including more than 200 pieces of jade, more than 130 pieces of stone and more than 270 pieces of pottery. Among the jade wares, the jade ornaments are exquisite.

Funerary stone tools are regular, smooth axes, tomahawks, etc. Among the burial pottery, there are a number of precious painted pottery and carved pottery. There are 206 funerary jades, including Bi, Cong, Huan, bangle, Guan, cone, crown, string and pendant, all made of nephrite. 125 of them are from the same tomb of the early clan of Liangzhu. Among these jades, the jade ornaments with the patterns of gods, human beings, birds and animals are the representative ones with unique shape, vivid image and exquisite workmanship, which can be called the gems of Liangzhu jade. Square Jade Cong and large stone Yue are also rare.

Site location

To the northwest of zhaolingshan site are caoxiaoshan site (in Weiting town of Suzhou City) and Chuodun site (in Zhengyi north of Baicheng town of Kunshan City), and to the southwest of zhanglingshan site (in Luzhi town of Suzhou City).

architectural composition

The 19 tombs discovered in 1990 are mainly distributed in the northwest slope of Tutai. They are arranged in three rows from north to south. There are no tombs, burial utensils and few funerary objects. Most of the human bones have different directions. Most of them are different in body and limb. Some hands and feet are bound. After identification, most of them are teenagers, especially men. They are obviously victims of death. Such a concentrated, large-scale and diverse phenomenon of collective killing and martyrdom is the first discovery in Liangzhu Cultural archaeology.

The 66 tombs discovered in 1991 are concentrated in the west of the central part of the platform, which can be roughly divided into three layers. Each layer is densely distributed and arranged in an orderly order, generally with tombs, burial utensils and funerary objects. The tombs are shallow, rectangular or trapezoidal, and the burial utensils are mostly single coffins with ochre paint. Most of the skeletons face south, and most of them are buried with straight legs.

protective measures

In 1992, zhaolingshan site was rated as one of the top ten archaeological achievements in China, and it is also a cultural relic protection unit in Jiangsu Province.

In May 2013, zhaolingshan site was approved as the seventh batch of national key cultural relics protection units by the State Council

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Address: Kunshan, Suzhou

Longitude: 120.97790527344

Latitude: 31.392330169678

Chinese PinYin : Zhao Ling Shan Yi Zhi